


The Shape of Things

by arcadian_dream



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Infidelity, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-08
Updated: 2010-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:40:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadian_dream/pseuds/arcadian_dream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the last years of her life, Ginny stumbles across a long-forgotten painting. She recounts the events of its composition in a letter addressed to no-one and yet, written to the world at large.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shape of Things

I don't know why it is that I'm telling you this – whoever you might happen to be.

Perhaps you are Draco, or my children.

Perhaps you are one of a future generation, reading this in a hundred years' time from now.

Perhaps you are no-one at all, and these words have not – and will not – know the wandering gaze of another's eyes as they rise from the page, fitting together into some sort of cohesive whole to make a meaning; shimmering anew in the light of understanding.

Perhaps I write only for myself at this moment (if this is the case, it makes this a rather strange artefact of my existence. I do, after all, already know what it is that I intend to tell you – continuing seems fruitless. But, as I look to the painting that stands, dust-covered, against the wall and which has - for too long - been hidden, I can't help but continue).

I need to recount, to remember: even if it is only for me that I do so. But then, that may be the most important re-telling of all: the story of one's own life, to one's self.

But then again, perhaps not.

I will start at the beginning, or near to it, anyway.

I was very young when I married Draco. We both were; young. Perhaps, in some ways, we were too young to have entered into an agreement on such a grand scale: that of a life together. Our families certainly thought so (it was one of the few – very few – things which they agreed upon; that, and their inability to see what it was that each of us saw in the other). Which is not to say that I didn't love Draco: I did, and I still do. And, I should think, if you were to ask him that question – whether or not he loved me – that, after much fidgeting as to the inappropriateness of the question (Draco has never been one to openly declare feelings of such a nature, it has always taken a little prodding) he would respond in kind.

However, in spite of the life and love we made and shared, I now concede - with the benefit of hindsight – that, perhaps, we did not come into marriage with our eyes open.

We married after the war, you see. We had known one another prior to that and, although I had admired Draco from the distance that did, at that time, divide us, there existed a simmering animosity between our families (the product of, I have understood, a long-standing dispute the cause of which no-one can _quite_ remember) that prevented us actually knowing one another even as acquaintances, let alone when it came to matters of love.

In the slowly-lifting shadows of the First World War though, things changed: we changed. Family squabbles and the judging eyes of the outside world no longer mattered so much, if at all. Everything was ... different.

We had each known our share of sadness at that time (though, as you can probably guess, Draco was reluctant to admit the existence of those feelings and I, to some degree, echoed him in that regard – I've not always been as open with such matters close to the heart as I am being here). We had, like so many others, lost friends and family, much too soon and in dreadful circumstances. It was amid this – this swaddling grief that seemed to be so prevalent, so common, that you could feel it in the air each morning when you stepped outside, stinging your lips and tongue and chapping the soft skin of your face – that Draco and I found each other. It was here in the lingering ashes of memories and those loved and lost and loved again (they would always be loved; always) Draco and I clung to each other. We clung to the breathing, living comfort of another's heartbeat; to the warmth of skin and the tenderness of flesh; and to the persistence of an uncompromising passion born, this time, of love, and not of hate: of life.

And so we married: what, after all, was there to wait for? Another war? More friends and family to lose, and for whom to grieve? We did not wait: we gripped each other – and the antithesis of death and destruction that we each found in the other in the love and life that burned in our veins – and we leapt, without looking to see where it might lead us.

I do not regret it, the haste with which we made our vows. I cannot. This life has been good to me; and to us. But when we jumped, head-long, into a new life, I did not foresee that part of myself which I would lose in marriage; the sacrifice I would make without even having been aware that such a bargain had been struck.

I will explain.

In my youth (when this pale freckled skin was smooth and taut and these waves of hair were a striking cherry red and not-yet flecked with ribbons of grey), I was an artist; a painter. Or, at least, that is what I aspired to. I spent many hours, I am sure of it, lost in daydreams of what I thought it was that my future would be: awash with creativity and critical acclaim, infamy (of the very best kind, of course) and admiration. This was, I thought, to be the shape of things: but, as I have mentioned (and you, no doubt, have guessed) this was not to be.

Like I have said, I do not regret marrying Draco. But I do regret losing that part of myself; the part that had created those dreams; the part that had held onto them for so long; the part for whom they would never become a reality. Which is why, one summer – many, many years ago now – I was so excited (thrilled is probably a better word – for that's what it was: a thrill) to open our home to a talented, young artist.

-*-

Draco had known Blaise since childhood. They had been at school together. The war, however, had separated them (as wars were – and are - wont to do) and, when the fighting eventually came to an end, Blaise left the country for Paris. It was that city that ignited his love of art; and it was his mother's insistence and her connections that allowed him to pursue it, to make it his life.

He was, in some ways, Bohemian; exotic. It surprised me to learn that Draco had invited him to stay.

-*-

It was, I'm sure you've realised, Blaise who painted the picture – yes, _that_ picture. The nude portrait. The funny thing is, even though I had forgotten about the existence of the painting I have never forgotten the first day that I posed for it. Even now, as I come to The End and look about me at the life I have created and shared - at its shadows drawing long and tremulous under the glowing warmth of a setting sun - I remember that day clearly.

It was summer; late summer. And the air felt thick: heavy with heat, and loaded with the full fragrant fruit of gardens in bloom.

I remember.

It was so sweet; I could taste it on my tongue.

I took a deep breath as I knocked on the door of the guest room; Blaise's room. He ushered me in, in silence. It should have felt awkward, tense; forbidden in some way. It didn't.

Blaise bid me undress. I hesitated. I couldn't help it (though it was not, I believe, the result of any belief in our wrongdoing – it never felt that way to me, to us; it still doesn't). It had been so long since anyone – save me, and Draco – had seen me naked; stripped bare, all soft, pink skin and secret places.

"It's alright," Blaise said with a wave of his hand, "You needn't feel obligated. People change their minds all the time –"

"No," I said, defiant to the point of anger, frustration (at, and with, myself in this case): "No. I'm going to do this, Blaise. I want to do this." I nodded, as if that somehow sealed the deal; and I smiled. I remember. I remember, because Blaise returned the smile. It was a sight infrequently seen, Blaise Zabini's smile, and I saw it on that day.

So: I undressed. The robe was cool and smooth against my skin as it slid, effortlessly, over my shoulders; as it gathered at my feet on the floor. I stepped out of it. I swallowed.

"Where would you like me?" I asked. The sunlight streaming in through the windows was warm and, as I stood there awaiting Blaise's instruction, it occurred to me that it almost felt as though the sun's golden rays were skimming across my the surface of my body, tickling and tantalising; like exciting and expectant fingers grasping, tentatively and yet determined, urging me to succumb to the pleasing comfort of their touch.

"Blaise?"

"Perhaps on the sofa ..." Blaise answered eventually, "No; wait," he added as he walked around the room, surveying me in the light. "There," he finally announced though I had, in fact, not moved a muscle: I was standing in the same position as when I had first undressed.

"Just –" he began as he stepped towards me, "Just –"

He paused again.

I was holding my breath, though I did not realise it at the time. I did not, in fact, realise it until Blaise reached out and, placing his broad, flat hands on my shoulders whispered to me:

"There."

In that moment, with the utterance of that one word, and under the gentle touch of Blaise's hands, I exhaled. I felt a tension I wasn't even aware that I had been holding onto released from deep within myself; it travelled, from the pit of my belly up through my chest and lungs and spilled out of my mouth, out of my being, in that breath; undulating like vast, empty fields under the command of an unfurling wind.

And in that moment, that part of myself that I had unknowingly given up, that shining beacon of freedom that I didn't know I had lost, returned.

"Blaise," I said, or tried to say, but could only manage to mouth the word: _"Blaise"_.

He did not respond. He turned his gaze from mine; he looked down, away. I watched as the bobbing of his Adam's apple as he swallowed. In silence, I placed one of my hands over his and, parting his fingers from my shoulder, guided them down the line of my sternum, over the subtle, curved lines of my abdomen and between my legs. I relinquished my hold on Blaise's hand and, running his index finger lightly over the tender parting of my lips his gaze met mine once more.

"Ginny," he croaked. His voice was hoarse: smooth, yet crackling, and light as the touch that, even as I write this, causes the blush to rise in my cheeks and the first sheen of sweat to rise on my skin.

Slipping his hand more firmly between my legs, Blaise wordlessly bid me widen my stance. I complied and, in what seemed like less than a heartbeat, Blaise fell to his knees before me. Positioning one hand on the small of my back he drew my hips forward to meet him: he wove a trail of moist, soft kisses over my lower stomach before pausing and, soon, I felt the warmth of his mouth engulf me.

It was a heat I had never known before: it was animalistic and yet pure; and, consumed by the sheer pleasure of it, I wished for it to swallow me, ravenous and whole.

-*-

We made love many times over the remainder of that summer, Blaise and I. Countless afternoons, spent in his room, bathed in sunlight and fraught with a recklessness that neither of us truly cared to acknowledge. It was on those afternoons, paint-splattered and free, that Blaise painted me: that he created the portrait you see; when he saw me as no-one has before; capturing the myriad colours and shapes in a way no-one has since.

It is only those shapes that remain of him – of us – now.

After that summer, I never saw Blaise again.


End file.
